


Good enough a reason

by ChocoNut



Series: Tales of love (Season 3/4) [40]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, An encounter with Tywin, F/M, Fluff, JBWeek2020, Set somewhere in 4x1, season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:14:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26697322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChocoNut/pseuds/ChocoNut
Summary: Tywin Lannister wants to know the reason behind Brienne lingering in King's Landing after she's escorted his son home.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Series: Tales of love (Season 3/4) [40]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1483640
Comments: 14
Kudos: 127
Collections: Jaime x Brienne Week 2020





	Good enough a reason

**Author's Note:**

> Here it is, my first contribution for JBWeek-2020. Pride/Humility - Jaime is both, isn't he?  
> Anyway, a truckload of fluff which I hope you enjoy. Thank you for reading :)

“I ask you one last time, Lady Brienne,” his imposing father quietly thunders, barely raising his voice to make his point. “Why are you here?”

“I told you, father.” Jaime is tired of recounting the same story since he’s arrived, but if one more time is going to grant the wench a fresh breath of life and an unharmed passage out of the hell she’s stuck in, he’s willing to go about it a hundred times. “She—”

“—was entrusted with the responsibility of escorting you back home,” says his father, directing his ire on the golden hand, the new burden he’s begun to bear. “And see what you’ve ended up as—” 

“That was not her fault,” Jaime steps up in defense. A side-glance at the wench tells him she’s still blaming herself for his state. “She—”

“It was, my lord.” Brienne looks up at her interrogators. “The Boltons manhandled me and Ser Jaime—” she turns to him, meets his eyes in a silent look that’s both a _sorry_ and a _thank you_ “—he lied to protect me.”

“We wouldn’t have got caught if it weren’t for my challenging her to a duel,” he recalls, till this moment, regretting his hot-blooded impulse to try and break free. “I thought I could kill her and make it back on my own.” He shudders when it occurs to him how close he’d been to succeeding.

“And you failed,” Cersei contributes her share with all the venom she can pour into her voice, her cold green eyes telling him nothing’s the same between them anymore. “You were beaten by a woman—”

“—who has proved herself a worthy match.” He goes back to the tough fight she’d put him through. “She can easily best the best swordsmen I know.”

While Brienne lowers her gaze, Cersei answers his glowing compliment with a mirthless laugh. “ _There are no men like me,_ ” she mimics the smugness he once used to put on like it was a part of his armour. “Where has that pride gone, brother?” 

_Left behind in Harrenhal. Stripped away, just like the hand that once defined me._

When her bitterness brings her no answer, she approaches Brienne whilst still chastising Jaime. “You’re a Lannister—”

“Yes, and see what that has reduced me to.” He holds out his metal fist. “If I had set out on my own, I might have ended up a pile of bones by now. She protected me better than any knight would, and even the best of the Kingsguard—”

“Gone soft on her, have you?” Cersei was still glaring at the wench. “Since when have you been known to show compassion for the enemy, Jaime?”

“She’s not the enemy!”

“What is she still here for then?” his father demands. “The last I knew, the Starks never had it in them to do us bloody favours.”

“She’s here for—” Jaime starts, but cannot go on, not at the cost of risking Brienne’s life. And Sansa’s too.

“Cutting me down like Ned Stark’s head was chopped off?” prompts the man who’s had him in a tightfisted grasp from the beginning. He pins her to her place with his sharp gaze. “Or, perhaps, she thinks she can kidnap Sansa from her marital home and smuggle her back to—” his lips twist in a smirk “—who, exactly? Is there any of her family left who isn’t rotting under the ground yet?”

Jaime’s heart misses a beat. He hopes the wench doesn’t succumb to this cruel provocation, doesn’t fall for a bait that will cost her her head. “Father—”

“I’m here because of your son, Lord Tywin,” Brienne speaks up, clear and confident. “Over the course of our journey I—”

“—have fallen in love with him?” Cersei reads her face and assumes the rest. “How dare you?” Suddenly she looks older than she is, fine lines that weren’t there before appearing on her forehead and the corners of her eyes. “And why would a Lannister—not just _a_ Lannister, but the golden lion himself, one of the most handsome men want to have anything to do with—”

“My golden lion days are over,” Jaime mumbles, knowing full well he’s lost all the respect he used to command, “and as far as the accusation you hurl at Lady Brienne is concerned, it is—”

“—all true, Your Grace,” comes her answer in the softest voice he’s heard.

Jaime gapes at her in stunned silence. What the hell is the wench aiming at? If she thinks this is going to grant her a safe exit, she doesn’t know his father.

“I’ve been right from the beginning,” his sister acknowledges, her tone equally soft, yet sharp enough to kill—the deadly edge of a poisoned dagger. “You’re one of those women who can’t resist hurling themselves at him. Have you ever taken a proper look at yourself? You think batting your eyelids will grant you a place in his heart but—” she pauses, she’s breathless, but her eyes don’t stop screaming, their silent threats all over the hall, every horror she wishes upon to the one who has dared challenged her position, out in the open. 

_Her position_.

 _The queen of_ _his heart,_ she’s always been, for as long as he’s known what love is, but now—

He looks at the wench again, lets himself be sucked into those eyes. Perhaps, love has always meant something different. Only he has failed to understand it for what it is. Of course, she’s only saying this to cover her true intent, yet, her words feel like a breath of fresh air gushing into his face, and the sensation in his stomach is something he hasn’t felt for long—not since he’d kissed Cersei for the first time. 

“You stayed back all these days in the hope of marrying my son?” his father insists on knowing, and Jaime can sense not anger but something else in the question, an intent that is beginning to emerge along with the faint smile he can make out.

“I did,” she answers with such depth in her voice that Jaime feels a tug in his chest. “I wished—” a slight crack in her speech interrupts her “—I still harbour the hope that he might, one day, feel the same for me. It’s nothing but folly, but—” she lets it be, heavy breathing the end to her unfinished statement. 

Such sincerity, such emotion—if this is a mere act, it doesn’t entirely feel like one. Bound by her word and duty, he knows she intends it as nothing but a ploy, but when he looks at her properly, delves deeper into her eyes, he can see more than a plan unfolding in them. He seeks out the gods he doesn’t believe in, reaches out to the fates that have brought him to this plight. Fervent pleas and hope, he finds rising within him, her words kindling in him a heartfelt wish, the desire to pick up the pieces and build a new life. 

“I wish to speak to Ser Jaime alone,” his father commands. 

And Jaime braces himself, knowing exactly what he wants to do.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


*****

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Footsteps, his entry is devoid of, yet she can sense his arrival, and before he can make it to her, she turns to greet him. “Ser Jaime.”

“My lady,” he returns the courtesy with a terse bow.

There’s a loaded spell of silence they have to endure before he shifts his weight from one leg to the other.

“Soo,” he drawls, at last, his eyes following her gaze. “You come here everyday to make sure Sansa is fine?”

“I come here because this place brings me peace,” Brienne says, wary of the tidings he bears. Jaime’s unexpected visit to the Godswood cannot be without good reason. 

A moment later, a strong inward push to explain herself takes over. “Ser Jaime—”

“Lady Brienne—” he blurts out at the same time, then halts, his fingers drumming the edge of the wall. “You first,” he says, all graciousness and chivalry.

“I apologize for the tall tale I made up this morning,” she begins, and the sun isn’t the reason for the sudden surge of heat up her neck. “I had no choice but to lie—”

“A lie?”

She nods, her heart plummeting all the way down to where Sansa sits. “I hope it didn’t go down too badly on you.”

He exhales deeply. “Father insists I marry you—”

“ _What?_ ” 

A tirade, a long speech on how the Lannisters must only breed with ones matching them in beauty and poise, she’d expected from the older man, but this—this is an unexpected predicament, something she cannot immediately think of a way out of. “I’m sorry,” she apologizes again, a part of her, though, wishing Tywin Lannister could have, somehow, wormed his way into his son’s dogged will. “I dragged you into this. I’ll think of a way out—”

“There’s only one way,” he says, leaning closer. “Marry me, wench. In exchange for this marriage, I did manage to negotiate with my father. He has agreed to let Sansa and Tyrion leave King's Landing and go North—where Cersei won’t torment her anymore.” He looks out into the distance, towards Sansa who’s still lost in her own musings. “Maybe we can take back Winterfell and restore it to its last living heir if this goes well.” 

_So this is all a deal and no more._

“This exchange—this—” She shakes her head, distraught. “You did all this—”

“—for you.”

“You don’t have to.” She knows it is out of guilt—the horrible feeling he’s been harbouring since Catelyn Stark met her death at the hands of his kin. 

“I don’t have to. I _want_ to—” 

“I can’t do this, Ser Jaime,” she declines, her heart turning to stone. Jaime’s a man who swears by love. His love, she isn’t, and she cannot bind herself to someone who’ll always seek another woman in her. “We must find some other way out. I can’t marry you.”

“Why not?” He tilts his head slightly—like he wants to get a proper view of her eyes. “You just announced you love me—”

“I don’t,” she denies again, the weight on her chest dragging her down.

“One must not lie in front of the gods, my lady.”

“I’m not lying—”

“Oh yes, you are.” She can feel the tips of his fingers breeze into hers. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in these past days, it’s how to read your eyes, my lady—” shuffling into the gap between them, he settles into the deepest gaze she’s encountered. “They’re the best sight I’ve been treated to every night before I sleep and the most beautiful thing I’ve woken up to every morning.”

Her heart slams hard into her rib cage when she tries to read him in return. No, he’s not mocking her at all. And no, his romantic praise of her is no light talk either. But it can’t be, can’t—

“I’ve grown quite used to them, wench,” he carries on in the same dreamy vein. “So much that I cannot do without drowning in them.”

“That’s no reason to marry someone,” she softly tries to find out more. “Nor is a deal you cooked up to save me from your father’s wrath.” 

He nods thoughtfully. “Maybe a new beginning is a good reason, don’t you think?” His fingers are on hers now. “The temptation to explore more of this new man you’ve made of me—” his voice breaks, he’s unable to go on in a flow. “A Lannister, stripped of all but his heart stands before you, my lady. And he—” he presses down on her hand “—he’s all _yours_.”

None of the arrogance, the pride and everything she once despised in the Kingslayer. This is him. Just _him_. Jaime. A lot, she wants to say, to confess, and more, but words abandon her when he brings his face to hers.

“Love,” he whispers, his lips brushing her ear, his breath making her shiver in the hot sun. “Is that good enough a reason to marry someone?” 

When he pulls back, expectant eyes _read_ hers for a reply. And as soon as he finds it, his smile is brighter than the brightest rays of the sun, his kiss, the best thing that has happened to her. 


End file.
